“When I turn my attention to God and face him, I turn my attention away from those things now behind me—things that are not God, things that restrict and bind me, keeping me from giving everything that I am to him who deserves all my love. When I turn like this I am penitent, turning from the old, “dead” way of life, to the new, life-giving existence that comes only from God.”
15 Days of Prayer with St. Bernadette of Lourdes by François Vayne (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2009) 51.